Feces of entangled North Atlantic right whales show 'extreme suffering'

A new study offers a glimpse intothe state of mind ofNorth Atlantic rightwhales when they aretrappedand dyingin fishing gear.

By measuring hormone levels in the collected feces of the endangeredwhales, scientistshave determinedthe animals' stresslevelsare"sky-high."

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"What it tells us isthat there is extremephysicaltrauma and extremesuffering goingon," saidRosalindRolland, a senior scientist atthe Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at theNew EnglandAquariumandtheleadauthor of the study.

"Because these hormone levels aren't just a slight elevation they are through-the-roof elevated."

It's not a subtle thing, it's an 'Oh, my God, this animal is really, really, in trouble.'- Rosalind Rolland, New EnglandAquarium scientist

The presence of the stress hormoneswasmeasured in the feces of 125individualNorth Atlantic right whales over 15 years, including six chronicallyentangled whales,a live stranded whaleandfive otherwhalesthat were killed by ship strikes.

Hormonelevels, including the textbook "fight-or-flight" hormonecortisol,wererecorded as being very highin animals that suffered a slow death but not in those that died suddenly fromcollisions with vessels.

Rolland said the study is the first of its kind to look exclusivelyat whatNorth Atlantic right whales go through while tangled in fishing lines. Whales have died as a result of the entanglement.

"A lot of entanglementsoccurin thispopulation," she said. "Eighty-three per cent of thispopulationofNorthAtlanticright whales has been entangled in fishing gear at some point, and 50 per cent at least twice."

As aveterinarian, Rolland said she wasn't qualified to speak to what similar levels of the stress hormones would be like in humans, but she was able to compare their impact on other animals.

"If I saw these types ofcortisollevels in a dog or a cat or a horse, I would be completely floored and very alarmed," Rolland said. "It's not a subtle thing, it's an 'Oh, my God, this animal is really, really, in trouble.'"

The North Atlantic right whale population suffered devastatinglossesthis year when 16 of the whales were found dead. Thereareonly about 450 North Atlantic right whales left on the planet.

Began with pregnancy hormones

Scientists have been collecting feces samples from North Atlantic right whales since 1999.

"I got the crazy idea that you could develop apregnancytest for right whales," Rolland said. "At that time, the calving rates in thispopulationhad just plummeted down to single digits. Infact,there was only one calf born in the year 2000."

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Rolland has published papers on the detection ofpregnancyhormones, which she said eventually led her to the study of the stress hormones in entangled whales.

Theprocessof extracting stress hormonesfromthe whale fecesisdescribed as"pioneering" bythe New EnglandAquarium.

Testedlong-dead whales

Accordingto Rolland, theprocess can be used to not only examine the stress levels of living whales but also on animals that have been dead as long as 15 years.

But the process of actually collecting whale feces was made easier by the fact the samplesfloat on the ocean's surface, and Rolland and hercolleagueswere aided by tracking dogs.

"These are the dogs that have the same training as a narcotics dog, only that you train them on right whale poop," said Rolland. "And we trained them to work off boats in thewater for four years, and they werephenomenal. We collected a lot of samples during those years."

Rolland'spaper "Fecal glucocorticoids and anthropogenic injury and mortality in North Atlantic right whalesEubalaenaglacialis" was published in Endangered Species Research by the Inter-Research Science Centre.